Re: What sets the "Sent" time of each email

[Allen Watson]

Title: Re: What sets the "Sent" time of each email

On or near 1/15/02 3:22 PM, Barry Wainwright at [EMAIL PROTECTED] observed:

> I wrote a little script that put these dates as near right as could
> be expected:
>
> tell application "Eudora"
>  set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {";"}
>  try
>    set field "Date" of message 0 to last text item of item 1 of (get
> field "received" of message 0)
>  end try
> end tell
>
> As you can see, it was written for Eudora, but it should be easy
> enough to modify it for Entourage.
>
I think what you are doing there, if I can guess correctly, is setting the "time sent" to the "time received" of the message. Right? That could be way off if a person isn't picking up mail frequently--say dialing in every day or two.

I wrote a script for Entourage to do this a bit more carefully (also resetting the text item delimiters properly, which any script should do, Barry--tsk, tsk!). My script scans the message headers for the first or oldest Received: header, which represents the time the user's ISP received the message from him or her--which is usually much closer to the time sent. However, that time is expressed in a format that AppleScript does not understand, and with a GMT offset so it is the sender's local time. Accordingly, my script reformats it in an AppleScript date format, adjusts it back to GMT and then to the receiver's local time. A bit more complex...but still fast.

--Script “Fix Time Sent”
tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
    activate
    set theMsg to item 1 of (get current messages)
    --Locate the first received header
    set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set hdrs to the headers of theMsg
    set hdrs to every paragraph of hdrs
    (* For some reason, received headers sometimes break into two lines, so
    I have to check the following line to see if it starts with a word followed by
    a colon; if not, it is a continuation of the previous header and needs to be appended
    to it. *)
    repeat with i from 1 to (count hdrs)
        set aHdr to item i of hdrs
        if aHdr starts with "Received:" then
            set receivedHdr to aHdr
            try
                set testWord to word 1 of item (i + 1) of hdrs
                if testWord does not end with ":" then set receivedHdr to receivedHdr & item (i + 1) of hdrs
            end try
        end if
        -- The one we want is the last received header, so keep looping
    end repeat
    --Now isolate the date/time stamp
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {";"}
    try
        set x to last text item of receivedHdr
    on error theErr number theNum
        display dialog "Err#:" & theNum & " " & theErr
    end try
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
    set GMToffset to last word of x
    set sign to character -5 of x
    set dateStamp to text 1 thru (-((length of GMToffset) + 2)) of x
    --Now reformat the damned date stamp to something Applescript can understand
    set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {" "}
    set dateParts to text items of dateStamp
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims
    set dd to item 3 of dateParts
    set mm to item 4 of dateParts
    set yy to item 5 of dateParts
    set hhmmss to item 6 of dateParts
    set mm to (offset of mm in "JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec") div 3 + 1
    set dateStamp to "" & mm & "/" & dd & "/" & yy & ":" & hhmmss
    -- Adjust user's time to GMT, then local time
    set GMToffset to ((sign & text 1 thru 2 of GMToffset) as number) * 3600 -- Number of seconds offset    
    tell me to set dateStamp to (date dateStamp)
    set dateStamp to dateStamp - GMToffset + (time to GMT) -- Subtract sender’s time, add receiver’s
    set time sent of theMsg to dateStamp
end tell

--
Microsoft MVP for Entourage/OE/Word
Allen Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> XNS name: =Allen Watson
Applescripts for Outlook Express and Entourage: <http://homepage.mac.com/allenwatson/>